Hey guys, remember that interview thing I did a while ago? Looks like there's a sort of follow up to it, but this time it looks like I'm talking with a bunch of other artists (~20?) who have been interviewed as well, and also it will be on Facebook! We will be discussing predetermined topics this time, as opposed to answering questions in live chat.

I have no idea how this will work since it's my first time doing this sort of mixer, but uh, you guys are welcome to come watch me make a fool of myself in the presence of people I've never met!

If possible, I'll try to put up a transcript when it's done so you can read it if you missed it or you just hate Facebook.

EDIT: Okay, it's done, and here are the snippets I cut out where I contribute (because there was a lot of discussion going on, but I only speak for like 5% of it, and I'm a really self-centered guy): smg.photobucket.com/user/johns…

Going to PAX again this year!(If you don't get/remember that reference, see last year's PAX report: fav.me/d49dcwl)

Anyhow, I'll be in Seattle from Aug 31 - Sep 2 with the Firefall crew, manning the booth on Sunday from opening til late noon. And maybe wandering around at the other times.So if you're one of the lucky folks who managed to get a ticket within the 24 hours that they were available, maybe you can find me!

And then we can shake hands and exchange words that neither of us can hear and then sheepishly look at the carpet when we realize we don't know what to do next and then "okaynicetomeetyoubye" and I write down in my report "today I shook hands with 100 cosplayers" and you are at home reading this and you go "that's not what I waaaas"

I will be tabling like a newb at the first two conventions, and uh, no table at the third.

So, what will I be doing at the anime conventions? No idea! I figured I'd have a table and a small handful of prints, some of which will sell out and the others which will not sell at all. I am mostly in this for the first-time experience of sitting in the alley and watching people walk by for hours on end. I'm prepared to not make any money here.

But what about you guys? Are there any (legal) services or products you'd hope to obtain from me if you saw me sitting on a rug with a cardboard box and a tin can?

And by "products" I really mean "prints of various sizes," because by now I am much too late to start designing new merchandise. Are you more into little postcards to collect, or big posters to plaster on walls? I was originally going to try to create and sell a manga, but I severely underestimated the amount of time it took to ink a 40+ pages and get a proof printed and then to get a number of copied printed.

Along the lines of "services" I mean I will probably have a marker and some paper and some time, so I can do things like sign stuff (even if I didn't make it), vandalize handouts, or even take commissions but then just draw whatever and maybe you're lucky and get what you requested?

Or I guess if you brought some references, I could act a little more professionally and honor your request.

Well, it turns out I was busy at work helping the team prepare the game for PAX! Crunch time ended just a while ago, which is why I suddenly was able to work on a pair of deviations. Anyhow, like last year, I'm going to be flying out to Seattle again to attend the convention. If any of you are going to be out there, head's up! I will be there stinking up the place with my pockets full of old bread-meat.

My schedule for booth duty is as follows, in case any of you want to hunt me down and tell me a story:Saturday: 1:15-6:30 PMSunday: 11:45-2:00 PM

And for the vast majority of you who are not going to PAX, I um...I will share with you this 17-second video of how cool firefighters are! www.youtube.com/watch?v=potsGT…

It's been a week since I got back from Anime Expo, but I had to take care of some real life business first. Now that that's done, I can get to work on making an AX report! You guys can probably expect it in about a week. Or maybe more?

I'm planning to rewrite the squiggly-lines code and use a different paper texture than the one I've been using, so getting this one ready for showing might take a bit longer than the previous ones (that, and there's quite a bit to cover). Anyhow, when I'm done with it I'll see if I can upload the source .fla so anyone who's interested in how it works can take a look. Or I guess they could use it to make their own book thing and BUM OFF MY EFFORTS.

I'll probably make the squiggly effect something you can toggle off, too, since some people have told me that it makes their head hurt and yeah, I can see how that might kind of suck.

Hey guys! It's been a while since I wrote a journal (or posted a deviation, or read through my message box for that matter), so here is one! Also, as a last minute notice, yes, I will be going to AX this year. Here's where you might find me:

As usual, I still have no table or way for anybody to find me. There is the possibility that if you bring a hot cross bun, you will eventually turn around and Whoah! there I am with my hands held open.

But as AX is a large place with many tastes and smells, there is also the chance that I will be unable to feel the bun's presence, and it will be a loss for the both of us.

And for the lot of you who are not going to AX, I will probably try to make another AX report when I get back! Not right when I get back, of course, but probably the week after or so.

I need to get back on this site more often.

EDIT:I forgot to mention this, but I will be there on Saturday! Just Saturday.Also, I made a grave mistake in confusing Funimation with another distributor. My deepest apologies for mixing up two very different companies!

I haven't written anything since August, and the year's almost over! Augh!

Anyhow, I don't think there was any news that I wanted to share with you guys. I guess I could talk a bit about my plans for the coming year?

1) ArtGonna keep drawing. It's something I like doing. I plan to revisit some old techniques from earlier parts of my gallery, like LINES and faux watercolors. I might also keep trying to find a way to make vector art look like paint.

2) GamesFor a guy who professes to like programming, I sure have a whole lot of No Finished Games in my gallery. I should probably start thinking about reducing the scope of my projects to something more realizable in the time that it takes for me to get bored of it and start chasing another idea (roughly 1 month)

3) Stories??I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from you guys on the mini stories I write in the comments (thanks!), and I'm thinking I should try exploring that area a bit more intentionally. Perhaps I'll start with something like a picture book? I think I'll try to make something next month that can be read in under 3 minutes and see how that fares in both production and reception.

4) Eatingand other life functions, so as to give the appearance of my still being alive.

For the however-many of you guys that are going to PAX, you will very likely see me there, though for reasons not art related! Unlike whenever I go to AX, at PAX I will actually be at a booth at predictable times of the day*. Specifically, I will be at the Red 5 Studios booth (between Valve and Bioware), possibly floating within the vicinity or performing booth duties. If you see me, feel free to greet me and we can exchange airborne diseases! Mine is The Common Cold.

...but I am currently at work and it might startle my coworkers, and then I'd have to explain the situation to them.

Anyhow, some of you may have noticed I've been inactive for the past month (or maybe you haven't! An absence is harder to notice than a presence). The reason for my apparent idleness is that I have been busy working on this:

Making this has reminded me how time-consuming animation is. It's kind of like cooking - you know how you can spend several hours preparing a dish, and when the time comes for it to be enjoyed it's gone in like 3 minutes? It's kind of like that, except instead of hours it is weeks.

And then there is programming, which is like the total opposite. You invest some time in writing up a function and you see it being used in a program potentially for years. It is magical. It is like magic cake, except old, hacky, and full of bugs.

So that was what I was up to for the past month. I should be returning to regular activity shortly; see you then!

Thanks everybody who voted and/or left comments in the last poll. You guys left a lot of detailed feedback, and I really appreciate it. Anyhow, here is a brief rundown of it:

My observations:

People tended to like the Pencil technique more, though there were some concerns that it was too flat and unexpressive. And "blurry."

Next was the Brush technique, which, while kind of crude in some respects, was perceived as bold and animated, as well as being my "signature style."

Last was the Lineless technique, which people said looked like concept art or simply didn't like it. Some also thought it might work for cuter pieces.

My response:

I am glad that Pencil has been well received. Though it takes more time to work with, I feel it delivers more of the results I've been trying to achieve with the Brush. At this time I feel I am more inclined to pursue this technique than the Brush, since I see more room for development in the former than the latter.

Brush is cool, but I feel like there's not much left for me to experiment in this area unless Adobe gives it a makeover. I will still be using this technique, but it will not be my main focus for now. Hopefully the expressiveness and liveliness of my work can still be shown through things other than variable line width.

I am kind of sad that my Lineless work is seen as second-rate stuff. True, I am pretty sloppy with it, but I've seen it done right before and I think it has potential to be amazing! I'm going to hang on to this one even if only a minority appreciates it. IT IS MY UGLY CHILD AND I LOVE IT ;_;

Hey, it's been a week since the end of Fanart February, and I haven't yet given any concluding remarks! I should do this before I forget. I will do things a little differently this year and briefly go over each fanart from the previous month:

Learned a new style of eyelash from drawing Ahiru. Also ended up watching some episodes and learning to appreciate simple but stylized anatomy. Stick limbs are cool, too! I wish I had invested some more time in the sketch phase of this picture to correct its base placement.

Only the large man was fun to draw. The others had too much detail in their costumes for my taste. My experience with this piece has led me to adopt this design philosophy for my future works: details are not bad, but don't rely on them to make a character interesting; that should be left to the silhouette.(I am not accusing Borderlands of this, but this is simply the conclusion I reached after considering the role of details)

Loved how fast I was able to finish this one in comparison to the previous two. While looking at references, I was reminded that folds in clothing look best when used sparingly and in the correct spots, and also when used to define the shape over which it is draped.

Huge time investment, but well worth it. However, pleased though I am, I do not feel this is the direction I should carry my style in. Loved the soft shading, but I think cel-shading is where I should focus on, at least for now. I may occasionally revisit this technique to see if there is some way I can develop it for my work flow, though.Oh, also remembered the double-eyelid from this. Don't know when I forgot it.

Most pleased with the Time/Quality ratio on this one. I also tried something I don't usually do: an exaggeration on convex curves. You can see this on Clockface's hands & arms and also parts of Wendy's clothing. I think I will have to consciously put this into practice more - it gives the line work a more organic feel. I wish I drew this with thinner lines, though...

This one I drew with thinner lines! Also of interest was that I almost drew every finger in this picture! For whatever reason, I tend to have this economizing habit of merging fingers into a finger-blob. This was probably something I picked up when imitating another artist's style. There are lots of things I do without realizing why, and I think identifying when finger-blobs are appropriate is going to be one of the things I need to start practicing.

And in regards to Fanart February as a whole, I think I will not do it again. At the end of the month, I realized I had been pushing myself to produce as much fanart as I could in a month, and almost every moment at my computer was spent in this endeavor. That was not fun, and the purpose of Fanart February in the first place was to be a time for me to relax and not burn myself out trying to create original content all the time. Now I am burning myself out trying to create copyrighted content. It makes no sense, and also resulted in me not submitting any fanart outside the month of February.

So in conclusion, not gonna do it next year. I will instead just draw fanart Once In A While Whenever It Feels Appropriate. There is no good reason to do only fanart in February and never anytime else.

How many of you remembered I put "+ More Stuff" in the title of this journal?

As I stood in the kitchen eating garlic flavored faba beans, it dawned on me that February had arrived. You guys remember February, right? February of "Fanart February"? That's right - I am going to be whoring out drawing fanart again!

For those of you who have forgotten or were simply not here last year, Fanart February is when I draw a bunch of fanart for various reasons. One is to simply indulge in the stuff I like. Another is to secretly hope to strike it rich with a fanbase and rake in the pageviews pay my respects to other creative minds (often by making fun of them). And of course, fanart is also useful for growing as an artist by copying style and content and learning from that. It's kind of like the basis of homework - you can learn only so much from observation (lecture), but it's not until you actually practice it that the knowledge becomes real. So respect your teachers, children! They are working hard for your education.

On a completely different matter, for those of you who don't read the author's comments (I know you exist. Your comments tell me you don't read them), I've put up draw videos for my previous two deviations on YouTube. Here are links to them:

They are sped up so you can't actually tell what I'm doing, but they will at least give you a high-level idea of what the process is behind my art (e.g. - sketch -> lines -> color -> background -> lighting). I don't plan to do anymore videos in the immediate future, as they are kind of stressful for me - it's kind of a blend of pressure and stage fright. Anyhow, those two videos have accomplished my goal of showing you the difference between how I draw lineless and lined art, so there will probably not be another video until I come up with or remember a technique I think you guys might be interested in.

Over the weekend my family and I have been on the road. It has been my first out-of-state experience within the States, so it was pretty cool. The plan was to drive from Orange County (CA) to the Grand Canyon (AZ), and then to Las Vegas (NV) in the course of three days. Anyhow, here is what we did!

Day 1: Woke up at 6:00 am, got ready to leave.

Sometime in the afternoon, I took the driving shift. For quite a while, our only company on the road was a red car traveling some distance ahead of us. I developed a kind of bond with it after half an hour.I shed a single tear at our parting when it exited left. Goodbye, red car.

Before our first destination of the Butt-crack of America, we first stopped at the Rectum of America - the Grand Canyon Caverns. It was a pretty cool place despite the nickname I gave it - apparently the air is so dry down there that even microbes can't last longer than 72 hours. There is no known ecosystem in there. Oh, and also we saw the mummified remains of a bobcat that fell into the caverns. Apparently it died an excruciating death by suffocation. That was the highlight of day 1.

Day 2B: Proceeded to head to Las Vegas along the 93. Poor choice. Got stuck in traffic for almost 2 hours. The car in front of us had a license plate that read "WUSSTIG". My brothers and I could not figure out what it meant, and ultimately we settled on it being a babyish pronunciation of "rustic" (though some Googling just now seems to indicate that "Wusstig" is a family name). We did not know what was holding up traffic, so we took turns guessing what it was: a beached whale, a traffic accident, or security checkpoint. At the end of the multi-mile long snake of stopped cars, it turned out to be a security checkpoint. We did not have the droids they were looking for, so we went through without a problem. Drove over the Hoover Dam, admired the view, cursed it for requiring security, and arrived at Vegas at 9 pm.

Day 3A:

Day 3B: left late in the afternoon and headed for home. Hooray! We are all tired and full of buffet.

This journal entry is almost kind of forced in the sense that I am aiming to have at least one journal entry every month this year (and since I'm writing it at 11 pm, it is probably already December for a great number of you. Well, at least I can deceive myself).

Well, actually nevermind, yes. The thing I wanted to say is taking too long for me to write up properly, so I will leave it for another day. So while it is still November here in California, I will come up with something else!

I hear Flash CS5 will be able to build apps for the iPhone & iPod Touch. Since I have one of the latter, I am kind of excited to try developing something and seeing it run on commercial hardware that is not a computer. Too bad I have a terrible history of not finishing my flash games, and the iPhouch has a terrible interface for conventional gaming! But maybe that will force me to figure out something more creative within these technical constraints.

It occurred to me that in my recent deviation's edit (the edit being removed now that I no longer need it), I may have come across as saying "Hey guys why aren't you leaving me comments"

which is NOT what I wanted to say

I'm grateful for most of the comments you guys leave (I'll leave the ones I don't appreciate for another time), and I appreciate them mostly for that fact that you guys make them spontaneously of your own volition and as a natural response. I like this kind of honest feedback to the point that I would encourage you to not leave a comment if you don't feel like it (and I believe a large number of you do. )

So for that reason, I apologize to anyone who had to explain to me why they didn't leave a comment. You guys should never have to explain yourself to me, unless you are leaving slanderous messages on my page and shoutbox and reporting violations on my deviations left and right for no reason. What I really mean is that you guys don't need to tell me why you fav'd half my gallery and didn't say a thing. You are totally free to do that, and I respect that. I myself don't leave comments very often, so I don't expect anyone to do so for me. It is welcome, though, and much appreciated.

The other thing I want to say is that yes, I do read all comments you leave. I obviously do not respond to them all, and even sometimes my closest friends can leave comments without my saying anything (sorry! I really do try to make an extra effort). Whether I respond or not does not have to do with how much I like you or your comment, though. Someone might say "I loved this!" and another will say "I am disappointed" and I might just not say anything to either. Or I might just silently place it in my folder of memories for laughs, or to plot vengeance one day. WHO KNOWS.

Oh, and as long as I have this journal set up about comments, I also want to point out that the Artist's Comments may or may not contain a story. That time I left a simple "No." in the box, you guys did a splendid job of not giving me sass about lack of story. Up until about halfway through the day, when they started popping up. It wasn't a lot, and I wasn't upset, but I want to make it clear that if I do not feel a story is appropriate for a deviation (or the characters simply do not stir my imagination), I will not write one. Those things can take up to an hour to write (not everything I type makes it into the final draft).

Well, that's about it for now. Thanks for keeping me company so far, and I look forward to what the future has in store and turn a blind eye to the horrendous disasters that are sure to come!